Social Wellness for the Modern World
The Uplift Center is Eli Walker's School for Belonging. Born from her acclaimed brand Drunk Yoga®, we build belonging through live experiences and trainings to uplift culture and re-center engagement in what matters: each other.
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We Design Belonging For You
(+ Teach you how to do it for yourself)
We teach people how to get along better + create the experiences that make it happen. Through play, presence, and practical strategy, we help organizations and individuals design social wellness strategies that stick.
Live Experiences
From corporate team-building activities and conferences to brand activations and retreats, Eli and her team of instructors create world-class social wellness experiences that spark radical belonging and sustain engagement long after the event ends.
Education
The Uplift Academy offers workshops, strategy sessions and Eli’s Belonging Toolkit that teach social wellness strategies through mindfulness, communication, and play, helping leaders, teams and individuals cultivate cultures rooted in connection and kindness.
Street Cred.
From Google to Porsche, TikTok to Indeed, our clients trust The Uplift Center to transform their events and community culture with equal parts play & professionalism.
Meet Our Founder —
Eli Walker
Eli Walker is a social wellness speaker and strategist, solo-performance artist and the creator of Drunk Yoga®, the viral global phenomenon that pioneered the social wellness movement by turning yoga into a drinking game. With a background in theater, mindfulness, and live experience design, Eli founded The Uplift Center to continue that mission: to help people [playfully] remember how to be human together through the art of getting over themselves, engaging communities and sparking radical belonging.
At The Uplift Center, we believe belonging isn’t found—it’s facilitated. We’ll show you how.
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Yoga for Corporate Activities
Eli Walker’s curated social yoga experience, designed to help you foster camaraderie through a dynamic and playful, yet meaningful container that’s uniquely designed for your team.We specialize in corporate retreats, off-sites, and we have a long history of working with NY and NYC based teams in the Hudson Valley. Looking for something virtual? We offer virtual wellness activities that build belonging as well.
Where & How We Build Belonging
The Uplift Center emerged from Eli's internationally acclaimed Drunk Yoga® - the world's first "yoga drinking game" that proved making wellness fun creates profound connection. What started as a social experiment became a global phenomenon, teaching us that the gateway to belonging is play.
Now, we bring that same magic to diverse event environments - whether team-building for corporate off-sites in NYC (and beyond), conferences, company retreats, brand experiences, or entrepreneur communities - with the strategic intention your success demands.
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We make wellness and networking a one-stop solution.
Event planners across the globe turn to Eli and her team to curate premiere yoga experiences seamlessly designed to provide all-level mindfulness breaks as well as fun, interactive events for attendees to network & make new friends while rejuvenating after a long day of activities. Learn more about our conference wellness activities.
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You gather your people, we’ll lift their spirits…while building your brand awareness at the same time.
Luxury brands, event producers and organizations hire us to curate unique, immersive pop-up experiences for their communities.
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Eli’s social wellness programming for corporate retreats is unlike anything else out there. More than “just” a yoga teacher, Eli curates entertaining scripts that include icebreakers for community-building, intelligent yoga sequences for rejuvenation and music playlists designed to foster camaraderie through play. *Also available: Professional development talks & workshops on community engagement.
THE P.L.A.Y. METHOD™
Our Framework for Belonging
Belonging doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. Take your sense of belonging into your own hands using Eli’s proprietary P.L.A.Y. Method™, created to help you set up the conditions for connection and build your own social wellness strategy tailored for your work, life, and community.
P — Place: Shape physical and figurative environments where you feel safe to engage with others.
L — Language: Choose your words wisely; the right language invites inclusion, commitment and safety.
A — Acknowledgment: Leverage play to get out of your head and into connection.
Y — You: Through mindfulness techniques, embody the presence through nervous system-regulation that makes belonging contagious.
Why We Do This
Belonging isn't a luxury. It's the whole game. We've got more ways to connect than ever and somehow we're worse at it. We ghost. We scroll. We show up to things and stand in the corner. Every team problem, every communication problem, every "why won't people just engage" issue? That's a belonging gap.
Most belonging advice sounds like: "Find your people!" Great. And then what?
The problem isn't that we need more connection. It's that we've forgotten what to do with it. That requires belonging skills. (And we teach ‘em.)
Ready to Build Belonging?
Let’s design an experience your people will never forget. Whether you’re hosting a conference, planning an off-site, or investing in your team’s culture through workshops, a corporate retreat or wellness brand activation, The Uplift Center will help you create belonging through play.
#GetSocial
Connect with us on social media for weekly #belonginghacks.
